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+# Documentation README
+
+## Introduction
+
+This document contains information on how the Fabric documentation is
+built and published as well as a few conventions one should be aware of
+before making changes to the doc.
+
+The crux of the documentation is written in
+[reStructuredText](http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html) which is
+converted to HTML using [Sphinx](http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/stable/).
+The HTML is then published on http://hyperledger-fabric.readthedocs.io
+which has a hook so that any new content that goes into `docs/source`
+on the main repository will trigger a new build and publication of the
+doc.
+
+## Conventions
+
+* Source files are in RST format and found in the `docs/source` directory.
+* The main entry point is index.rst, so to add something into the Table
+  of Contents you would simply modify that file in the same manner as
+  all of the other topics. It's very self-explanatory once you look at
+  it.
+* Relative links should be used whenever possible. The preferred
+  syntax for this is: :doc:\`anchor text <relativepath>\`
+  <br/>Do not put the .rst suffix at the end of the filepath.
+* For non RST files, such as text files, MD or YAML files, link to the
+  file on github, like this one for instance:
+  https://github.com/hyperledger/fabric/blob/master/docs/README.md
+
+Notes: The above means we have a dependency on the github mirror
+repository. Relative links are unfortunately not working on github
+when browsing through a RST file.
+
+## Setup
+
+Making any changes to the documentation will require you to test your
+changes by building the doc in a way similar to how it is done for
+production. There are two possible setups you can use to do so:
+setting up your own staging repo and publication website, or building
+the docs on your machine. The following sections cover both options:
+
+### Setting up your own staging repo and publication website
+
+You can easily build your own staging repo following these steps:
+
+1. Fork [fabric on github](https://github.com/hyperledger/fabric)
+1. From your fork, go to `settings` in the upper right portion of the screen,
+1. click `Integration & services`,
+1. click `Add service` dropdown,
+1. and scroll down to ReadTheDocs.
+1. Next, go to http://readthedocs.org and sign up for an account. One of the first prompts will offer to link to github. Elect this then,
+1. click import a project,
+1. navigate through the options to your fork (e.g. yourgithubid/fabric),
+1. it will ask for a name for this project. Choose something
+intuitive. Your name will preface the URL and you may want to append `-fabric` to ensure that you can distinguish between this and other docs that you need to create for other projects. So for example:
+`yourgithubid-fabric.readthedocs.io/en/latest`
+
+Now anytime you modify or add documentation content to your fork, this
+URL will automatically get updated with your changes!
+
+### Building the docs on your machine
+
+Here are the quick steps to achieve this on a local machine without
+depending on ReadTheDocs, starting from the main fabric
+directory. Note: you may need to adjust depending on your OS.
+
+```
+sudo pip install Sphinx
+sudo pip install sphinx_rtd_theme
+cd fabric/docs # Be in this directory. Makefile sits there.
+make html
+```
+
+This will generate all the html files in `docs/build/html` which you can
+then start browsing locally using your browser. Every time you make a
+change to the documentation you will of course need to rerun `make
+html`.
+
+In addition, if you'd like, you may also run a local web server with the following commands (or equivalent depending on your OS):
+
+```
+sudo apt-get install apache2
+cd source/build/html
+sudo cp -r * /var/www/html/
+```
+
+You can then access the html files at `http://localhost/index.html`.